In a continuing effort to improve the quality of fresh market and shipping fruits, we, the inventors, typically hybridize a large number of nectarine and peach seedlings each year. The present invention relates to a new and distinct variety of nectarine tree, which has been denominated varietally as `Early Juan`. The present variety was developed by us in 1988 in a cultivated area of our experimental orchard at Bradford Farms near Le Grand, Calif. in Merced County (San Joaquin Valley). It was a first generation cross using `Early Diamond` (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 5, 438) yellow flesh nectarine as the seed parent and an unnamed seedling as the selected pollen parent. Subsequent to origination of the present variety of nectarine tree, we asexually reproduced it by budding and grafting, and such reproduction of plant and fruit characteristics were true to the original plant in all respects. The reproduction of the variety included the use of Nemaguard Rootstock, the standard of the stone fruit industry in central California, upon which the present variety was compatible and true to type.
The fruit produced by the present variety is most similar to its seed parent, the `Early Diamond` (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 5, 438), by producing early maturing nectarines that are full red in skin color and yellow to the stone in flesh color, but is distinguished therefrom and an improvement thereon by producing fruit that ripens one week earlier, that is larger in size, that is less susceptible to split stones, that is clingstone instead of freestone, and that has a bitter kernel instead of sweet.